Boracay, Boracay, Boracay!

I am fresh off of a week in beautiful Boracay and it was a relaxing good time!

I got a real steal for this "before I dip" getaway. I snagged the flight for a whopping $177RT.

Though this was supposed to be the low season, beachfront lodging was still hard to come by, at least via pre-booking. So imagine my surprise when I arrived to find so many empty beach chairs throughout all of the stations.

???
Scene from one of the properties I wanted that was allegedly "full"

Where is everyone during the day??

Anyway, I still got a decent room with ocean view and I'm satisfied with how it all turned out. My hotel was in Station 2, and it gets noisy out there. So I still had direct access to the action without being right in it, works for me.

View from my room at the Lime Hotel. There's a rooftop infinity pool above Station 2.

Ocean views without the noise, pics don't do it justice.

As I was planning this trip it seemed that there wasn't much to do on the island, at least not anything I'd be interested in. Usually the beach is enough for me but a week is a long time on such a small island.

I booked an "island hopping" tour and I would recommend skipping it. The stops were just okay and other than Crystal Cove, they can be accessed by trike for a much, much cheaper cost.

For instance, Puka Beach was our final stop on the tour. I grabbed a motor trike from in front of my hotel and paid a fourth of the cost of the tour to get there on my own, without hassle.

Rained for the time that we were here.

The food at Puka Beach was good as hell, extremely well seasoned chicken

They love KB out in Boracay! Ha!

The flag has Bob Marley's face on it, they really love him, too.

I really liked Puka Beach, very relaxing, even in the rain.

Another tour I hopped on was the Boracay Pub Crawl. Great concept, but anticlimactic for me. I am much more introverted that I thought plus the heat/humidity on the island is out of this world. Heat and alcohol don't really mix well for me but I did it anyway. I was quite popular among the group, for obvious reasons :)

What happened on White Beach, stays on White Beach.

Finally, I stepped all the way out of my comfort zone and did a mermaid photo shoot. This seemed like a standard Boracay activity for the women I'd researched that had been. Let's just say that there's a lot of love in my midsection these days, so I wasn't totally confident with the idea. If you're solo it goes by really fast (that's another topic) but overall I'm pleased (read: indifferent) with the outcome.

The rest of my days were spent on the beach, as they should have been. It's the monsoon rain season in much of Asia right now but that didn't stop the show-or the heat.

Willy's Rock in Station 1.
Water is shallow enough to walk up to it in the afternoon.

What a surprise, food and drinks were okay, too.

Check out Dmall in Station 2 but better deals are on the beach

White Beach

Low tide

There was a day or two when it was so hot that I just couldn't deal, so I went to my room and took full advantage of the view I had, or got an in-room massage.

The sunsets were memorable

As were the sunrises :)

Speaking of massage, I had one daily, sometimes two or three times a day. You can get them anywhere on the beaches and the options vary. My go-to was the foot massage, most of them were divine. They're the equivalent go $7 so do indulge.

I concluded this trip just two days before my permanent departure from South Korea. I knew that I wanted to detox that tumultuous experience before heading home to the USA for summer break. It was exactly what I needed, and I wasn't ready to leave. I thought one week would be too much but I could have easily done another. Boracay has some of the most gorgeous waters I've ever seen, and besides the aggressive (but friendly) vendors, White Beach totally lives up to its hype. I'm going to figure out a way to return there. Thank you, Boracay!